However, a second edition of the Daily Star quickly emerged, telling a very different story.

Friday's second edition told a different story.

The hastily written article this time informed us:

"One Direction star Harry Styles was furious last night after a fake sex picture appeared on the internet."

And the rewritten article inside added:

"A source close to the band said: "The fans knew immediately this picture wasn't Harry. For a start, the tattoo is not in the right place. Harry and the other lads are sick of all the fake stories and fake pictures..."

The Daily Star doesn't mention whether any media outlets fell for the picture.

May 27, 2014

"The Germans" have published a photo of Kate Middleton's bottom and the UK media are not happy about it at all. Never mind the years the British papers have spent ogling Kate's bottom and speculating about the contents of her womb. And put out of your mind all those "Her Royal Thighness" headlines when Kate's skirt was blown open. This is "the Germans" invading the privacy of Her Royal Thighness. And if there's one thing the tabloids like more than pictures of famous naked bottoms it's criticising "the Germans".

As The Sun says:

"They beat us on penalties, hog our sun loungers, and now the Germans are exposing the Duchess of Cambridge's bum. A gust of wind that lifted Kate's skirt has led to German paper Bild printing an embarrassing picture. We reckon they should keep their Hans off our princess's rear end."

You get the idea.

The Sun claims to have turned down the photos out of respect and sought out Ingrid Seward, editor in chief of Majesty magazine (which actually exists, apparently) to give them a well-deserved pat on the back.

"No one in the UK would publish this as the papers are showing respect to the royals," Seward told the The Sun - possibly ignoring the paper's 2012 decision to publish a front page photo of Prince Harry in the buff.

Seward then added that the decision by German tabloid Bild to publish the photos of Kate was "typical of the Germans" because "they love everything that smacks of nudity".

At this juncture it seems only fair to point out that The Sun's criticism of people who "love everything that smacks of nudity" appeared on Page 3, next to a picture of a topless woman in just a pair of briefs.

The Sun's picture editor obviously looked at the pictures closely - for purely professional reasons - and decided to respectfully obscure the Princess's bum crack with a carefully-placed crown. And while Seward was clearly appalled by this invasion of privacy she did eventually pluck up the courage to take a look herself and informed Sun readers "she does have a fantastic figure", respectfully adding "Kate doesn't seem to be wearing any pants".

May 24, 2014

UKIP may have emerged from the local council elections with exactly as many councils as they started with - zero. And they may have won fewer than half the seats won by the ailing Liberal Democrats, but they have certainly been doing their bit to muscle in on the rich history of car crash political PR.

First there was the UKIP spin doctor who tried to haul Nigel Farage out of an interview on LBC when the UKIP leader was on the ropes. Then there was the fiasco of the 'Croydon Carnival' PR stunt where a steel pan band booked to make UKIP look a bit less racist refused to play because UKIP are a bit too racist. This was followed by a classic example of a backfiring attempt to create a trending topic on Twitter.

Then on Friday a UKIP spokeswoman appeared to suggest, live on Radio 4, that well educated and well read people are unlikely to vote for the party - the obvious implication being that only the ignorant and the foolish would turn up to vote for UKIP.

"We haven't really got our message across in London. We do have a more media savvy, well educated population in London and they are more likely to have read some of the negative press that there has been about us and I think they'd be more likely to believe it."

But it's not only been UKIP's PR machine that has been backfiring this past week. Labour had a sticky moment involving Ed Miliband's apparent difficulty eating a sandwich.

Before you call this a coincidence or suggest MPs have no choice but to eat in the full glare of the camera, think of all the famous people you've never seen eating or even ordering food. We don't get this window into the lives of politicians by accident. Their spin doctors want us to see them ordering and enjoying 'normal' food.

Clearly Miliband ordering a bacon sarnie at a market was meant to be a stunt in a similar vein. But footage from ITN revealed the moment Miliband's PR minders realised showing the voters a masticating Miliband wasn't going to result in the right kind of headlines. They hurriedly tried to form a human shield to block out the cameras. But it was all too late:

Inevitably, 'sandwichgate', as it may or may not have been called, fired the imagination of mischievous types on Twitter with user @GeneralBoles very much leading the charge, Photoshopping Miliband into various other dining scenes:

May 17, 2014

A series of typical tall tales from the Sunday Sport have been finding a new audience on social media in recent weeks as their outrageous headlines catch the eye and cause much mirth.

One detail about these stories which has intrigued me is where they find the individuals pictured alongside these stories. We can be sure they aren't really who the stories claim but are they a willing model who is in on the joke? Or are they perhaps oblivious to the fact they are being linked to such tabloid silliness?

For example, who is the real 'Steve Butcher', the rather distinctive-looking individual pictured this week alongside claims that 'Nik Naks turned his bellend orange'?

The answer is actually rather sinister.

A few minutes on Google revealed the Sport's 'Steve Butcher, 34, from Crewe' is actually a 40-year-old named Joseph Smeenk. That is according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement which lists him as a convicted sex offender. If the Sport's photo looks like a police mugshot they found online, it's because it is:

May 14, 2014

Remember when it felt like you couldn't open a newspaper without being told we were about to be hit with a deluge of immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria. We were told flights and buses were fully booked and as many as 29 million - the entire population of both countries - could be heading to the UK when controls were lifted on 1 January:

And then the media was left a little red-faced when just one Romanian immigrant seemed to turn up:

A one-man deluge: Wall-to-wall media coverage greeted the arrival of Victor Spirescu who was dramatically outnumbered by TV crews and journalists when he stepped off a flight from Romania at Luton Airport.

Now the numbers have been counted and the Office of National Statistics has today reported the number of Romanians and Bulgarians working in the UK.... wait for it... fell by 4,000 over the first three months of 2014.

May 12, 2014

Last week, this blog highlighted the fact that George Clooney's engagement was considered bigger news than the abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls and a developing human rights crisis in Nigeria.

That newspapers are more interested in easy to digest stories about celebrities is not surprising of course, but this fact should be remembered when criticising the very easy to mock trend of so-called 'hashtag activism' - lending support for a cause by sharing, tweeting and retweeting content and comment united by a common hashtag.

Sharing a hashtag or posing for a photo holding said hashtag may seem incredibly shallow, populist nonsense, but then many of the people such activism is intended to influence are shallow and populist.

As if to prove the point, here's Prime Minister David Cameron holding up a hashtag on the BBC's Andrew Marr show (right).

Now, hopefully nobody thinks because #BringBackOurGirls is trending this is job done and the terror group behind the awful crimes in Nigeria will call it a day. A popular hashtag won't solve anything directly but it can be effective in showing the media and vote-conscious politicians that people care about an issue.

While much of the media ignored the story in Nigeria there was far less public pressure upon politicians to act. As soon as voters start showing in significant numbers that they care about a serious issue, politicians will likely get involved. Similarly, a number of media outlets that had all but ignored the story have over the past week started to cover it since celebrities got involved in the campaign organised via and around the shared hashtag:

Such awareness raising should not be mocked simply because it is easy. There is an argument that it makes us lazy in our activism and I'm sure there are those taking to the streets in protest at this story who understandably consider the actions of many on social media to be the most half-hearted kind of vain, bandwagon-jumping lip-service. While retweeting a hashtag should not absolve us from doing whatever else we can, I'm inclined to believe the majority of those lending whatever social media weight they may have to successfully getting this story onto the media and political agenda would otherwise have done nothing.

May 07, 2014

The Telegraph today brings us news of hard times in the home counties. Under the headline "I make £120,000 but I can't recall the last time we went out for dinner" we hear the story of one man whose family are feeling the pinch:

"The squeeze has really hit me and my family. Even though we have a reasonable income we have had to economise, swapping Ocado deliveries for trips to Tesco, never changing our cars or going on city breaks. I can't remember the last time we went out for dinner," says Guy Jackson, 53, a financial compliance officer in the City, who lives in Farnham, Surrey."

Swapping Ocado for Tesco? Oh the humanity!

The Telegraph informs us that among Jackson's outgoings are £45,000 on school fees.

"It is quite difficult for people like me to maintain our standard of living in the current climate, and that is a worry," he concludes.

The Telegraph doesn't mention whether there is a phone number for donations.

Update: In case you're wondering why Jackson would have opened himself up to such easy ridicule it seems he may have been taking one for the team. The Telegraph's article gives a plug to some research from a financial services company called Nutmeg. And although it is not mentioned by the Telegraph, Jackson's profile on LinkedIn suggests he is an employee of the same company (hat tip @Clairywoowoo).

May 04, 2014

The coverage of two very different stories over the past week has served as an interesting barometer of UK newspaper priorities. One is a tragic story from west Africa which has been developing since mid-April but gaining long-overdue worldwide attention in the past week, the other is a celebrity tale from Hollywood.

There is growing anger about how little media attention there has been on the human rights abuses in Nigeria which have seen more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped and subjected to terrible crimes.

Meanwhile it was almost impossible to miss the news that George Clooney got engaged this week.

Just five of nine national daily newspapers* covered the ongoing situation in Nigeria during the period of 28 April to 3 May compared to eight which covered the news of Clooney's engagement:

The story count for the week also shows a similar pattern with more stories in total being written about the Clooney engagement (34) than the Nigerian kidnappings (21). However, in terms of word count the two stories have seen almost identical levels of coverage over the past week with 11,449 words printed about George Clooney and 11,043 printed about the Nigerian kidnappings (though 4,824 of those words appeared in just one newspaper, The Guardian).

The Guardian's dominant role (4,824 words) in covering the news from Nigeria can be clearly seen when looking at the top three media outlets by word count. The Times (2,688 words) produced the second highest level of coverage followed, some may think surprisingly, by the Mirror (1,504 words):

Perhaps also surprising, The Guardian, with 2,430 words on the subject, printed the greatest amount of coverage of the George Clooney engagement (including 491 words on 'How will getting hitched affect Clooney's image?'). The Telegraph (2,090) was second followed by the Daily Mail (2,006).

Of course it could be argued that some of this may be down to the fact broadsheets typically run longer articles, though that isn't strictly true in this case. The Sun's longest article on George Clooney was 957 words, compared to 942 for The Guardian. Meanwhile, the Daily Mail and the Express produced the most articles about Clooney with seven apiece over the week, while the longest single article was an incredible 1,200 word monster in The Telegraph.

This is only a simple analysis of how the papers treated just two stories over a six day period and suggesting word count or story count are, on their own, an effective measure of priority - or quality - of coverage would be foolish. Looking at the balance struck on each paper individually perhaps paints the clearest picture of where papers' priorities were.

The Times and The Guardian had almost identical ratios of Nigerian news to Clooney engagement news:

It is of course entirely up to each newspaper to decide what their readers will want or need to know about and the Telegraph was obviously convinced its readers would be more interested in and better served by a focus on Clooney, while The Mirror was almost the exact opposite:

The Sun and The Express clearly believed the news from Nigeria would not be of interest or of importance to their readers, while both gave significant coverage to George Clooney's news:

The Daily Mail also decided against covering the Nigerian news while the Independent believed its readers would have - or should have - no interest in Clooney's happy news:

* For the purposes of this research the national newspapers analysed were the main print editions of The Sun, Mirror, Daily Express, Daily Star, Daily Mail, Independent, Daily Telegraph, Guardian and The Times printed during the period 28 April to 3 May. The Independent's i was omitted due to the duplication of content already counted in the Independent.

May 03, 2014

Television presenter Jeremy Clarkson has criticised the BBC for making him apologise over the racism row which has hit the headlines this week. Clarkson's latest comments appear in his column for Saturday's The Sun, where he makes clear his apology was something he had to do, rather than something he wanted to do or thought he should do.

"The BBC had a plan," he writes. "Unfortunately, it wasn't a very good one. They said, very firmly, that I should apologise."

In his Sun column Clarkson claims he was being made to apologise for "something I hadn't done", despite admitting in the same article he "mumbled" the offending word.

"Eventually, I decided to apologise for not making my mumble mumbly enough," he wrote.

Putting to one side Clarkson's argument that mumbling an offensive word doesn't really count, it seems very odd that such a seasoned broadcaster believes mumbling constituted "everything in my power to not use that word" as he had claimed in his original apology. There are surely many ways somebody with Clarkson's clout on set could have changed things around so he didn't even have to mumble the word.

According to Clarkson he is now on a final warning from the BBC. "If I make one more offensive remark, anywhere, at any time, I will be sacked," he wrote.

That news may be enough to flush out any other controversial outtakes which might exist. Given the Top Gear clip leaked to the Mirror this week had been gathering dust for nearly two years, even Clarkson may not know what other clips might emerge to test the patience of the BBC.

The timing of the past week's leak follows Top Gear's producer having to apologise last month for a joke Clarkson made on camera during the show's filming in Burma which also drew complaints about racism.

Clarkson certainly seems to believe the leak was by a colleague or colleagues who would rather he didn't work for the BBC. Clarkson wrote in The Sun:

"Many people have been asking me how on earth the raw, unused footage from Top Gear ever ended up in the hands of a newspaper. Well, it's no secret that many people in the BBC see Top Gear in general, and me in particular, as a big gob of phlegm in their lovely plate of lentils. They hate us and some would undoubtedly like us all to die of shame."

It was suggested at the time that some of Gray and Keys' former colleagues had tired of their 'banter' and decided it was time to run them out of town. Even when Andy Gray returned to UK television earlier this year - almost three years to the day since he parted company with Sky - his debut on BT Sport was followed almost immediately by the leak of yet another previously unseen clip which appeared to have been held back.